Orbital’s Antares fails seconds after launch

Orbital’s Antares launch vehicle – tasked with lofting the CRS-3 Cygnus to the International Space Station (ISS) – dramatically failed after around ten seconds of flight, exploding and falling back on to the launch center. There is extensive damage to the Wallops facility, although it has been confirmed all personnel are accounted for, with no injuries reported.

Antares failure:

Attempt 1 on Monday was scubbed due to boat in the Range Safety area. Boat did not depart the area in time to allow Antares to launch within her 10 minute window. *UPDATES For Attempt 1*

Attempt 2: Vehicle was recycled for a launch at a T-0 of 18:22 local time. Launch ended in failure after around six seconds. *UPDATES For Attempt 2*

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The mission, Orbital CRS-3, was to mark the first flight of the upgraded Antares 130 rocket, which featured a more powerful second stage to accommodate larger future payloads.

As such, the upgrade would have had no relevance to the failure.

First flown in April 2013, the launch was the fifth flight of Orbital’s Antares rocket which was developed specifically to launch the Cygnus spacecraft. However, it was the first time a problem of any kind was seen during her career.

The Antares 130 made use of the same first stage as its predecessors. Of Ukrainian design and based loosely on the first stage of the Zenit rocket, the stage was developed by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau.

It is powered by a pair of AJ26-58 engines, which are themselves reconditioned NK-33 engines left over from the Soviet Union’s cancelled N-1F rocket. The USSR abandoned the N-1F in the early 1970s after all four test flights of a prototype, the N-1, ended in failure.

It was the sixth launch from the pad, following the four previous Antares launches and the single launch of Space Services Incorporated’s Conestoga 1620 rocket in October 1995.

The Conestoga launch ended in failure with the rocket being destroyed by range safety after a hydraulic failure during first stage flight resulted in a loss of control.

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport is a commercial launch site which also includes Pad 0B, used by smaller solid-fuelled rockets. That pad has been used by Orbital for Minotaur I and V launches, along with Alliant Techsystems’ suborbital ALV X-1 launch in 2008, which was destroyed by range safety early in its mission.

In preparation for Tuesday launch, the Antares was rolled to its launch pad overnight Friday. Launch operations began with a call to stations three hours and fifty minutes ahead of liftoff, with propellant loading beginning around ninety minutes before launch.

During the final stages of the countdown, the spacecraft transferred onto internal power at around the fifteen minute mark. The rocket was switched to internal power ten minutes later, with the terminal count beginning around three minutes before liftoff. Two minutes before launch the first stage propellant tanks were pressurised.

When the countdown reached zero, the AJ-26 engines ignited with Antares lifting off 2.2 seconds later to begin its climb towards orbit.

However, after around ten seconds into ascent, the engine plume changed appearance, before the aft of the vehicle exploded. The rest of the vehicle – including Cygnus – fell back on to the launch pad area and exploded.

More information on the failure is expected over the coming hours.

The launch was to be the sixty-eighth orbital launch attempt of 2014 and the twentieth for the United States.

It was also planned to be the third and final Antares launch of the year, with Orbital’s next launch scheduled for 1 April next year, with another Antares 130 carrying the first Enhanced Cygnus mission to the ISS. This launch will clearly be delayed.

An investigation will be set up, with Orbital leading the effort to find the root cause of the failure. The public has been told not to touch or collect any debris that may wash up outside of the launch center.